From the 13th to the 17th October ATD Ireland held an exhibition in EPIC the CHQ Building showcasing the outputs of some of our recent projects. This included the report and inspiring artwork from LNOB series 3, Poverty Talks report and animation in collaboration with Dr Joe Whelan, Lockdown Liberties and the #Addthe10th campaign. We also promoted the 17th October UN Day for the Eradication of Poverty, its significance and the history of the day in Ireland. Further, we showcased some important reports and work from some of our friends and partnership organisations including; EAPN Ireland, Coalition 2030, SVP’s work on MESL and poetry from Martin Byrne.
The main focus was our new ‘Breaking Barriers: A participatory approach to defining socio- economic discrimination’ project which was officially launched on October 17th in line with the UN Day for the Eradication of Poverty. This project works to define socio- economic discrimination in an accessible way, tease out it’s main concepts and encapsulates three years of work with the #Addthe10th campaign. Read more including the full report here. We had copies of the report available for the public to take and consume. Through the Breaking Barriers artwork we encouraged exhibition attendees to reflect on questions such as;
“Should children from families experiencing poverty be judged from birth?”
People could also write down their thoughts on ‘what does socio- economic discrimination mean?’ – which was the core question of the breaking barriers project.
We recently released a short film based on the breaking barriers work featuring some perspectives from participants of the collective conversations.
After the 17th October event as the crowd from October 17th gathered together at our exhibition, we officially launched the report with some words from ATD Ireland community activist Paul and Dr Joe Whelan from Trinity College Dublin. Paul spoke on the concept of ‘breaking barriers’ and the process of collaborating with academics, as an activist with experience of poverty and SED, to build new knowledge.
We appreciated that Joe took time to write a thoughtful conclusion to the report.
“At its core the Breaking Barriers project has sought to grapple with and break down the concept of socio- economic discrimination, to render it useful, tangible and understandable. That this process has not been left to academics or to those with professional backgrounds alone is undoubtedly a unique strength of what is presented”.
Thank you very much to the CHQ Building for hosting our exhibition and the after refreshments for October 17th and for all the staff for bring so helpful.
Thank you to everyone who took the time to attend the exhibition and have a chat with us about our work. Thank you to all who took part in the Breaking Barriers research and to IHREC for funding the project. Thank you to the 17 October Committee and the Department of Social Protection for funding the 17 October event.
